The U.S. State Department has blamed a high-ranking Chinese official for ordering cyber attacks on search engine giant Google last year.
A classified cable sent from the American embassy in Beijing in May of last year quoted a well-placed source as saying that Li Changchun, China's senior propaganda official, ordered the attacks when he searched for his own name and found results that criticized him personally.
The hacking attacks and demands that the search engine censor its content finally forced Google to shut down its operations in mainland China and move its operations to Hong Kong.
The Associated Press reports the cable about the hacking attacks was classified secret by U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission in Beijing Robert Goldberg, and was released by the WebsiteWikileaks toThe New York Times andThe Guardian newspapers.
